


I can't take my eyes off of you

by adamparrishisbi



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: AU, Fair warning the chapters are hella short I'm sorry., M/M, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt, florist and tattoo artist au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 02:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3711988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adamparrishisbi/pseuds/adamparrishisbi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>anonymous requested Pynch Florist and Tattoo Artist AU for 3 line/paragraph fics and it turned into a very long piece</p><p> </p><p>Title comes from Blower's Daughter (because I'm a sucker for song lyric titles)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to post this bit chapter by chapter, which was not really an intentional thing but I didn't want to wait any longer (until I finished it)
> 
> More chapters to come

It was hard enough trying to have a florist's shop on skid row without the constant Little Shop of Horrors jokes from the boy who ran the tattoo parlor next door. It was hard enough having to deal with the tattoo artist next door without the constant stream of unsavory patrons. 

There was an incredible contrast already, although both boys had two story run down buildings, with a studio apartment on the top floor and a dilapidated business on the bottom floor. Ronan's floral shop had a light airy atmosphere despite the oppressive lighting. The walls were all a bright, light yellow, and a large handmade sandwich board chalked with crazy plants and the words "Lynch's Leaves Floral" sat on the street outside the shop. Adam's tattoo parlor was dark and the exterior crumbled. "Lucky Lady Tattoos" was painted on in the most cliche tattoo parlor font possible. A leftover relic of the wayward soul who'd opened this disaster years ago. As it happened the boys who inhabited the buildings were polar opposites of their buildings, and inverted twins of each other. Ronan was a dark boy with a dark soul who wore dark clothes and walked around with a dark bird on his shoulder, but Adam was a sunbeam in the dark alley, with his dusty hair and dusty clothes and his laugh like dusty sunbeams streaming through a window. 

The 300 block of skid row was a yin yang, with the dark boy in the light lot, and the light boy in the dark lot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to post a lot of tiny chapters frequently to feed my obsession with publishing an unfinished work.

"Parrish that's the fifth con who took my parking spot with a crappy car THIS WEEK." Ronan shouted at the boy standing across the street, as he got out of his car, parked illegally on the curb. He had left for a "just a minute" to pick up a bag of fertilizer that was delivered to the post office. (No one delivered to skid row, especially not a box marked 'plant food' to a florist on skid row.)   
"Honestly Ronan I'm not going to try to make him leave. Besides the fact that he could kill me, he's paying $150 for this tattoo." Adam emphasized the number like it was more money than he thought he would ever make in one sitting tattooing. He lived off of small jobs, and low rent for an old building. He was saving money for school he said, this was a reliable job, he got a steady income, rent was cheap, and utilities included. He could save most of what he earned for school. He wanted to do something with his life he said. But for now he was a dusty boy in a dark house trying to stay afloat.   
Ronan had no such worries about money, he did this for love. The crazy flowers he pulled from dreams weren't the sort of thing you sold in the good parts of town. They were peculiar, unseen before, some were poisonous. All were beautiful.   
"Is it finally a sleeve or something? Or are you still tattooing 'BIGG CASH' on meaty guys knuckles?" Ronan teased. They joked back and forth like this a lot, but Ronan never meant it. He wasn't so sure about Parrish. Part of him seemed hollow.   
"Oh fuck off Lynch." Adam walked back in to finish the job he was in the middle of, and Ronan dragged the box of plant food in through the doors to the store. He slumped down onto a chair and started slicing open the box. Why here of all places. Why Parrish of all boys?


	3. Chapter 3

"Parrish you need to stop bringing ex cons to my HOUSE AND PLACE OF BUSINESS" Ronan yelled out the upstairs 'bedroom' window, which opened a full 2 feet away from Adam's corresponding window. Another beater was parked in Ronan's spot, he'd forgotten to move his car last night after the last meathead left. A tall, thin, dark haired, and incredibly attractive boy walked over to Adam's window and leaned out.   
"You must be Ronan, I'm Marc." He spoke with a soft French accent and extended a hand out the window towards Ronan, who was struck with the juxtaposition of manners, a shirtless boy, shaking his hand, through a window. Adam clearly hadn't noticed this and shouted in retaliation across the apartment,  
"Lynch you need to stop keeping me up with your REALLY LOUD BOYFRIENDS."  
At this Ronan and Marc stopped shaking hands, and Marc began to turn an endearing shade of scarlet.   
"Come on it's been two weeks since the last one. Besides IT'S NOT THE BOYFRIENDS WHO ARE LOUD" Ronan shouted back. Marc finished his transformation to a ripe tomato, and Adam turned around to discover the aforementioned tomato had introduced himself to the "loud" neighbor.   
"RONAN LYNCH I HAVE A GUEST. CONDUCT YOURSELF WITH SOME DEGREE OF DECORUM." Adam was joining the "guest" in the league of tomato faced, but very attractive boys.   
"Some degree of decorum? Is that how you'd summarize what I overheard coming from this apartment last night?" Ronan knew he crossed a line, which was exactly why he had said it.   
"I really must get going Adam. This was very nice." Marc said before collecting his things and rushing out the door.   
"Wait! Don't you want some coffee? Or maybe to give me your phone number? Marc?" Adam called after him to no avail. He got in the beater parked in Ronan's spot and drove off.   
"Thank you, asshole." Adam said to Ronan. His embarrassment had turned to mild anger.   
"Too bad, he was much hotter than the last girl." Ronan shouted as he walked downstairs to move his car.   
"I hope you get a ticket" Adam called after him. Adam did not hope Ronan got a ticket, because the place they both parked in front of their respective shops was a 2-hour parking zone and if Ronan was ticketed, so was Adam, and he couldn't afford a ticket right now, or ever.  
It had almost become a competition, who could scare off the other's date fastest. Ronan held the title with "approximately two minutes after she got out of her car at Adam's house" which lead to Adam meeting dates away from home and bringing them back after Ronan was asleep. However the chance of a second date after meeting the neighbor was slim to none. Adam couldn't scare away Ronan's suitors as easily, mostly because no one could scare away someone who thought a tall Irish boy with a pet raven and a scowl was a good person to screw.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm getting less confident in these as they progress.

Ronan occasionally sent people to Adam's shop. The few patrons who were young and wild, would sometimes inquire, especially given Ronan left flyers for Adam's parlor around his shop "accidentally" all the time. It went like this, the adventurous patron would walk in and talk to Ronan as he sketched out the order, except Ronan's sketches were crisp lines and watercolor marker inking, they were art themselves. Ronan would leave the "sketch" on top of the stack of flyers for "Lucky Lady" and check the stock. He come out after a few minutes and tell the patron it would be about a half an hour if that was okay. The patron would ask about the shop next door. Ronan would tell them that Adam was meticulous, and precise, and his tattoos looked perfect. He could do anything. Ronan would then shove the perfect sketch towards the adventurous patron and advise they look themselves. "I'll have this done in 45 minutes or so." The next time Adam saw Ronan, Adam would ask about the watercolor flowers, and Ronan would joke "You're stealing my business Parrish!" Sometimes Ronan did stupid things like send Adam his business. Ronan wasn't quite sure why he did it, only that it was worth it to see Adam smile once and a while.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm running out of steam, and I'm going to probably run out of chapters to post before I've finished writing (if I ever finish)

Ronan had been dreaming parts of a tattoo for months. He'd been dreaming a magic tattoo, with harsh lines and dark Celtic knots tangling ravens and claws and fleur de lis and scythes. He only ever dreamed parts of it, a shoulder, a piece of spine, soft dusty hands holding the tattoo machine as it turned Ronan's pale skin blacker than his heart. Tonight he dreamed of himself straddling the chair of a tattoo parlor, his back, and his soul, bared to the artist. The design slowly came into being across his skin, moving and changing as it spread across his skin, cloaking his shoulder blades and trailing far down his spine, to below the waistband of his jeans. He could feel the artist's hands tracing along the vertebrae as he worked, the last person to touch the skin when it was blank. Ronan saw the drawing of the tattoo in his hands it was obvious he'd drawn it, it looked like it was across a round piece of glass. Sharp edges of the tattoo contrasted the smooth edges of the glass. Sharp needles on his skin contrasted the smooth hands of the artist tracing down his back and lowering the edge of his jeans just a little. He woke with a start, holding the glass, covered with his dream art.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After way too long of a pause for school, I give you a chapter I wrote a month ago.

"Why are you in here Lynch?" Adam was bitter again. Ronan couldn't remember exactly what had caused it this time, probably an amalgam of incidents over the past few weeks.  
"I need your skills Parrish" Ronan raised his eyebrows and smirked a little.  
"For the last time, I'm not going to-"  
"Don't finish that thought, I'm here to get a tattoo." Adam stopped mid eye-roll to look in confusion at Ronan.  
"What the hell? Why do you want a tattoo?"  
"I dreamed it. I think you can probably do it better than anyone else" Ronan only ever told the truth, but sometimes he was more honest than other times. This time he was brutally honest as he handed the glass to Adam.  
"How big do you want this, it's a lot of detail for a small tattoo?" Adam had begun to take him seriously.  
"In the dream it went shoulder to shoulder and down my whole spine" Ronan didn't make eye contact. This wasn't the sort of tattoo Adam normally did.  
"How far down?" Adam had picked up on what was embarrassing Ronan.  
"It started at the T1 vertebra and went to the L4 vertebra. I looked that up so I could be exact." Adam made mental note to find out where each and every vertebra landed on Ronan Lynch's back.  
"A tattoo that size would have to be done in at least three sittings, with a month between them." Adam exhaled slowly at how much ink that would be.  
"Great. Do you have a free chunk soon to do the first third?"  
"You actually want to do this? Each sitting would be like $250+" Adam was pretty sure this was s joke. That was more money than he had ever made from a tattoo, for just a third of one.  
"Yeah. How about tomorrow evening?" Ronan had a fierce determination in his eyes, and was refusing to break Adam's gaze.  
"Lynch you've lost your mind." Adam shook his head and walked back into his building. Ronan spent the rest of the day tending the exceptionally poisonous plants and thinking about the tattoo. He wondered if it would hurt. He wondered if Adam had soft hands. He wondered if it would look like it did in the dream. He wondered if it would end like the dream did. He wondered if it was as bad, or as good as everyone said it was.


	7. Chapter 7

"Okay I'm defining 'evening' as 6:00 pm, and I'll come then unless you have other plans Parrish?" Ronan phoned the Lucky Lady at 5:00 pm, despite the redundancy of the situation.  
"You're actually doing this? Are you sure?"  
"Yes. I'm sure"  
"Yeah six is good it's probably going to take about three hours though so if you're not busy earlier might be better."  
"I can close up early and come then?"  
"How early"  
"Approximately now" Adam's sunbeam laugh rang through the receiver, even altered by the phone it was bright. The line clicked and a dial tone started, Ronan took this to mean he could come immediately. He closed up the front of the shop, grabbed the glass with the tattoo on it, locked the front door, and walked into Lucky Lady Tattoo Parlor at 5:07 on a Wednesday night.

***

"Ronan Lynch this is the single most intricate design I have ever done." Adam Parrish looked over his shoulder at Ronan, who presently had his shirt off, and his feet kicked up on Adam's desk. Adam was reproducing the design on the glass at the right scale for Ronan, on paper.  
"What can I say, I'm difficult." Ronan was doodling on a napkin, a bird with feathers falling from it. Adam had moved to tracing the part of the design that would be done today onto transfer paper. Two chunks from the outer edges, stretching out like wings. Visually they could stand alone for a month until the next third.  
"Is that tonight's chunk?"  
"That was the plan. Are you still sure?"  
"Yeah" Ronan shivered in the cold air, he watched Adam's smooth hands dance the market across the page. Adam looked up at Ronan, still unconvinced this wasn't a strange prank.  
"Ready? The chair's over there." Ronan kicked his feet off the table slowly and walked over to the chair, which was essentially two black cushions held in a chair shape from the ground with smooth metal rods. He slid down to sitting across it, crossing his arms on top of the chair back and burying his face in them. Adam's footsteps came closer, and the sounds of a stool rolling across the laminate floor echoed through the room. In his peripheral vision he saw Adam put on black rubber gloves and douse a few cotton pads in alcohol. It was cold on his back, and raised the hair on his neck. A damp towel ran across his shoulders, sending another shiver through him.  
"I'm about to put on the transfer. Don't move. Even a little." Adam held Ronan's shoulder still for emphasis as he smoothed the paper, first one wing of knots, then the other. Ronan tensed under Adam's touch, repeating "Don't move" in his head, to drown out the parts of his mind that were screaming "Adam Parrish has his hands on your skin!" As soon as Adam peeled the paper back Ronan fell back, a spring compressed too tight and finally released.  
"Woah there! You need a minute before we go to needles and permanent things?" Adam's sunbeam laugh rang again through this room that rarely saw true sunlight. Ronan couldn't form a complete sentence, so he just nodded like an idiot and walked to the bathroom.

The night wasn't entirely clear. Ronan remembered splashing water on his face in the bathroom and looking at the water slide of knotted wings on his back in the tiny mirror. He remembered somehow being in the chair again. He remembered from the whole washed out, dimly lit night, exactly one thing in vivid technicolor detail. The moment the first needle hit his skin. And the moment directly afterwards when a thin delicate finger brushed along his shoulder, one thin layer of what really felt more like vinyl at this point, between (and his brain screamed this fact at him) direct skin to skin contact. He remembered sometime later thanking Adam, paying him, and leaving quickly, and now he's lying silently awake in his bed, replaying that one technicolor moment over and over again. It's not like it was the first time he had ever been touched by Adam, why was this so special? Oh god that made it sound much more sexual than it was. Why was he analyzing every interaction he ever had with the neighbor now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is all I have written so far. I will write more, but if anyone has ideas for where to take it, I am open to everything. 
> 
> This goes out to, of course, the beautiful anon who sent me this prompt. I'll publish your ask when I finish it. It also goes for the lovely Feist who wanted to read my stuff, even if she's not in the TRC fandom (yet. She will be converted.)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU: Uptown Funk is like the Murder Squash Song and by the end of this Ronan WILL finish uptown funking everything up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hell-atus guys, I wrote most of this in July but then a lot of things happened, I got busy, and never finished the word I was typing, so I came back to it now, and it's poooooossible that more will come soon. who knows. 
> 
> If you're an old reader, go back and read the end of chapter 7, the last paragraph is new.

The truly interesting thing about this yin yang block of Skid Row, was the acoustic miracle that was the mirrored upstairs of the buildings. Ronan blamed it on how close the houses were, Adam blamed it on how loud Ronan was, both of them joked that it was to make their lives as hellish as possible, but for some yet unknown reason, everything that went on upstairs could be heard throughout the upstairs of both buildings, but not downstairs or outdoors. This acoustic miracle offered a unique, and unrequested window into exactly what each boy did at night. They casually memorized little details about each other's routines without realizing it. Every time Ronan didn't take a shower during the half hour window he normally did, Adam would knock on his upstairs window and tease him about it, and although Ronan would never admit it to Adam, even when the upstairs window of The Lucky Lady was closed, and the curtain was drawn, Ronan could tell exactly what was happening with the dates he didn't scare away. (Neither admitted these unfortunate acoustics were the reason their game had begun, although it was) Both boys were very restless sleepers, so on nights like tonight, when the upstairs was entirely silent, both boys knew they were lying awake. Ronan had never particularly experimented with how much could be heard from his bedroom, and he figured now was as good a time as any. 

"I'm hot" he whispered. No response. 

"I'm hooooot" slightly louder. Still no response. 

"I'm too hot" he started to sing at a slight increase in volume when he heard Adam get up, fling open his window, and start knocking loudly on Ronan's window. 

"JESUS I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TWO TIMES. I KNOW YOU THINK YOU'RE HOT BUT DONT YOU DARE FINISH THAT SONG RONAN LYNCH" 

"Hot damn" Ronan said under his breath as he got up. 

"Oh my god." Adam was turning around when Ronan reached the window. 

"Wait no. I didn't mean that! My apartment is really hot. Way too hot. Here let me fan some of this hot air your way." Ronan began a very elaborate attempt to fan hot air into Adam's apartment, that looked more like a tropical bird's mating dance. Adam tried to frown harder at this, but ended up laughing. The ringing sunbeam laugh did nothing to help Ronan feel any less hot. 

"Okay you can stop. I get it. Why don't you turn on a fan?" Adam was smiling. Adam was also shirtless. It appeared the entire block was conspiring to make Ronan overheat. 

"My fan is broken. The air conditioning unit I had is no longer present. My brother refuses to bring it back because he thinks that will get me to come home. Normally I would rely on a breeze, but it appears your entire building is blocking that breeze." Ronan stopped abruptly, he realized that Adam also had a fan, which was working, but he couldn't afford to run, and Adam also couldn't afford an air conditioning unit in the first place. Adam was, however, still laughing at Ronan, and not thinking about his lack of air conditioners, or brothers to steal them. 

"None of these things are new developments." Adam said through laughter. Ronan tried his best to scowl. 

"It's hot. I'm hot. Your apartment is blocking my cool air therefore you aren't hot." The scowl broke 0.2 seconds after telling Adam he wasn't hot. Ronan did not lie, and yet here he was. "Oh god I didn't- that's- I meant- aaaahhhhhhh" mid-sentence Ronan's explanations had turned to a low groan of embarrassment, while Adam's crescendoing laughter hit a new high. 

"Oh Jesus. I can't breathe I'm laughing too hard. Help." Adam was doubled over leaning against his windowsill. Ronan stood there in horror, his lips curling in a soundless grimace of defeat. Adam bit his hand in an attempt to stop his uncontrollable laughter. It was not effective. Ronan was speechless, and it appeared so was Adam, he was starting to slip down the wall next to his window, and in a last attempt, slapped a hand futilely against his sill. Ronan reached forward, half heartedly out his window and softly shouted "No!"

 

"Too late." Adam said as his laughter subsided. Ronan stepped out onto the roof of the dormer below his bedroom window, an architectural bumble that was structurally terrible, an aesthetic nightmare, but ideal for walking from your upstairs bedroom into your best friend's upstairs bedroom without jumping the 2 foot gap, 15 feet above ground. Adam stood up just as Ronan was climbing through his window. 

"Ronan Lynch, with all due respect, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Ronan glanced up from where he was watching his footing on Adam's corresponding architectural nightmare. “What the hell does it look like I’m doing Parrish? I’m coming over because my apartment is as hot as Satan’s asscrack.” Adam furrowed his eyebrows, and briefly attempted a frown that fell to more laughter instead. 

"I did not give you permission to invade my 'home and place of business.' " Ronan had already put one foot inside Adam's apartment. 

"Well I was really only planning on invading your home, unless you do business up here in your bedroom, and depending on how you act, upstairs kitchen or bathroom." Ronan was just through the window when Adam slammed it on Ronan's sweatpant leg. 

"Prostitution is not a joke. It's also not a profession I engage in. But I'm assuming your kitchen comments meant that you are going to go back and bring pancake mix and eggs for breakfast since you're STAYING IN MY HOME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION" Ronan was already crossing the house and opening every single window, which was exactly four. 

"What are you doing now?" Adam's exasperation was growing as Ronan climbed back out the window, across the adjacent structural catastrophes, and into his apartment which was apparently "hot as satan's asscrack" 

"Getting pancake mix, eggs, and power. Your apartment is not nearly as hot as mine but is still Too Hot" a long groan was all the response Ronan got. 

"Hey Parrish, take this out of my hands so I can get across the roof without egging your house." Ronan was in fact holding a box of Krusteaz pancake mix, and a mostly full carton of eggs out the window. Luckily Adam turned to see the peace offering, and took it, freeing Ronan to climb, with the end of a 4 cord, 24 foot long power strip daisy chain. 

"What is this? Why are you? What?" Adam looked on in helpless confusion. 

"I know you rarely use electricity up here but I know you've seen an extension cord at least once in your life." Ronan squished through the window of Adam's apartment for the third time that night. 

"What?"

"You have a fan over here. It's not plugged in. I figured since the stingy landlord refuses to include electricity, even though we get gas and water, that I might as well use my electricity for your fan. Y'know since I'm invading your home, and place of potential business and all" Ronan shrugged a little in an attempt to make it seem nonchalant. Just a give and take thing. Ronan's sleeping in Adam's house, so he'll bring breakfast and electricity.

"Uh thanks. I'm not sure if that fan even works. It's been here since I moved in but I never plugged it in once." Adam shrugged a little and put down the breakfast foods on a rickety desk piled high with textbooks. 

"Night student?" Ronan gestured to the textbooks as he picked up the eggs and moved towards the refrigerator. 

"Uh actually I'm on a break right now, but I'm about to start up summer classes. It's a mix of whenever I can squeeze some in, and a few online classes that I take on the library computers." Adam shuffled awkwardly and pulled a thin blanket off his bed.

"Probably won't need that." He folded it and dropped it on the desk chair. They stood for a moment, looking at each other in awkward silence.  

"If this was a sitcom we'd run into each other's arms right now” Ronan said nonchalantly as he cracked a slight smile. 

"If this were a sitcom you wouldn't have sworn your way into my home and bribed me with breakfast, we'd be sitting in our own apartments holding up signs to each other through the window." Adam said cynically, and moved his pillows from one end of the bed to the other, and then back.

"I said sitcom, not Taylor Swift video." Ronan said mockingly.

"Well then your extension cord would have been a single cord, not a couple of surge protecters dangling in the wind, and an electric fire waiting to happen." Adam paused. "Oh my god we both listen to Taylor Swift." The boys descended into laughter so raucous they both fell over onto Adam's bed. 


End file.
